West Indian Americans

West Indian Americans are immigrants from the former British West Indies, Belize, and Guyana and their U.S.-born offspring. Although there has always been a steady stream of immigration from these home countries to the United States, the bulk of the immigration occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1924, restrictive immigration legislation effectively halted immigration from the islands, but in 1965, Congress passed, and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed, the landmark Immigration Act of 1965, which opened the floodgates for a mass migratory stream that continues today, although somewhat abated by economic and political factors.

Born out of brutal slavery, emancipation, oppressive colonialism, and later gradual political independence in most islands, for the last 50 years the West Indies have generally been perceived as a laboratory for racial and ethnic harmony and continue to be a main attraction for tourists.

West Indian Americans comprise many different ethnicities: African, East Indian, Portuguese, Syrian, Chinese, European, Amerinidian, and mixed groupings, some of which are called Douglahs (the result of miscegenation of East Indians and Africans). The reasons for emigration from the West Indies are largely economic and result from the failure of political independence to bring the necessary economic reform. In addition, globalization has made the islands’ single-crop economies largely irrelevant.

There is a Creole culture in the West Indies that is a combination of British, Amerindian, African, and other cultural elements, and this culture has formed, and in many instances replaced, the Anglo culture. Creole culture is also correlated with urbanization. There are other cultures, primarily in rural areas, most notably a large numbers of Hindus, as well as some some Chinese, Portuguese, and Native Americans (called Amerindians).

Most West Indian Americans, because of chain migration, settled in the northeast corridor of the United States, and they have created viable and vibrant ethnic communities and enclaves in New York City and its suburbs; Florida (Miami and the southeastern part of the state); Boston, Massachusetts; Hartford, Connecticut; and Newark, New Jersey. Here, West Indian immigrants have contributed much to their adopted homeland.